Lexicon of war has a new buzzword

Every modern conflict seems to throw up some new military-speak. The latest is 'optics'

Optical fibres resemble fireworks, an explosion, or even the nightly anti-aircraft fire over Libya, leading some pundits to use the word 'optics' to describe public perception of modern war Photograph: Roger Ressmeyer/ Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS

On 31 May 1978, the Wall Street Journal quoted Jimmy Carter's special counsellor on inflation, Robert Strauss, as saying that business leaders who went along with Carter's anti-inflation measures might be invited to the White House as a token of appreciation.

"It would be a nice optical step," Strauss said. The Journal was not impressed by the idea: the following day, an editorial rebuffed Strauss's overtures with the line "Optics will not cure inflation."

The word, Jan Freeman wrote, "invokes a whole set of tech-and-science terms like 'physics,' 'statistics' and 'tectonics', as well as Greek-derived high-concept nouns like 'hermeneutics', 'aesthetics' and 'pragmatics', all with an aura of brainy precision."

To the public, though, the frequent deployment of optics may end up having the opposite effect, smacking as it does of looking through a glass, darkly rather than through something clean and transparent.